Raonel Valdez is a fugitive wanted for a $2.8 million gold heist in Coral Gables, Fla. / Bolton Investigations Inc.

by Brad Heath, USA TODAY

by Brad Heath, USA TODAY

A fugitive charged with pulling off a $2.8 million gold heist could soon be set free because U.S. immigration officials have blocked attempts to return him to the United States to be put on trial.

Raonel Valdez was arrested two months ago in Belize, capping an international manhunt that spanned four countries. He has been locked up there ever since, awaiting extradition to the United States.

But investigators have so far been unable to bring him back because the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has told police it will not allow Valdez, a Cuban national, to enter this country, which is a necessary - and usually perfunctory - step in returning a fugitive from overseas, according to law enforcement officials familiar with the case.

That could leave Belizean officials with little choice but to free him.

"It will happen any day," said David Bolton, a private investigator who was among those tracking Valdez. "We searched for this guy in four countries. Letting him go is just going to facilitate more of this kind of crime."

Homeland security officials indicated late Thursday that their position on Valdez was not final. A spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Barbara Gonzalez, said the agency was reviewing a request that he be allowed to return to the United States and had "not yet made a decision."

The heist in 2012 was among Florida's biggest and most brazen.

Police and prosecutors charged that Valdez and two other men spent months stalking a courier for a company that buys gold in Bolivia and resells it to South Florida refineries. In October 2012, the three finally cornered the courier inside the elevator of his Coral Gables, Fla., apartment building. The courier told police that one of the men aimed a handgun at him, then shoved him against the back wall of the elevator and told him in Spanish that "we only came for the gold." The others seized two suitcases packed with 110 pounds of gold flakes and fled.

Police caught up with Valdez two weeks later. They tied him to the crime, in part, by tracking a GPS bracelet he was wearing because of an unrelated arrest; the monitor put Valdez at the scene of the robbery and let investigators reconstruct how he had surveilled the courier, 51-year-old George Villegas. Villegas identified Valdez in court as one of the robbers.

"We have a good case," said Ed Griffith, a spokesman for the Miami-Dade state attorney's office.

Valdez's alleged accomplices have not been charged.

Not long after a Miami judge freed Valdez on $75,000 bond, he broke free of another GPS monitoring device and disappeared.

Investigators from the U.S. Marshals Service chased Valdez from Florida to the Bahamas and Mexico. He was arrested two months ago in Belize as he tried to cross the border to Guatemala using a Cuban passport; guards searched for his name on the Internet and quickly discovered that he was wanted in Florida, Bolton said.

Valdez cannot re-enter the country without authorization from the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration. So far, Bolton and two law enforcement officials said, the agency has turned down repeated requests to allow Valdez back into the United States to stand trial. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case publicly.

Extraditing Cuban citizens to the United States can be problematic because once they are in the country, it is difficult to ever return them to Cuba. But that hasn't stopped officials from allowing other Cubans to enter the United States to face prosecution. In 2009, for example, federal prosecutors extradited another Cuban, Rodolfo Rodriguez Cabrera, from Latvia to face charges of producing counterfeit slot machines. He was sentenced to two years in federal prison.

A spokesman for the Marshals Service, Drew Wade, said the agency has asked immigration authorities to "approve parole of Valdez back into the United States to face justice in the alleged armed robbery case." Wade said Marshals investigators "used many domestic and international investigative resources to locate" him. The Marshals Service helps extradite hundreds of fugitives from other countries each year.

Valdez's status in Belize was unclear on Thursday. An official at the Belize Central Prison was unable to confirm that he was still in custody there. Officials at Belize's embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.

Griffith said Miami prosecutors had no information about Valdez's status in Belize nor the attempts to return him to the United States.

A lawyer for Valdez, Alex Michaels, dismissed the government's case as weak and "circumstantial." Among the problems: The courier, Villegas, died not long after the robbery, and it is unclear whether prosecutors would be able to use his testimony from a 2012 bond hearing against Valdez if he ever goes on trial. "If (Valdez) comes back, he will win," Michaels said.

Michaels said he had not been in contact with Valdez since he was arrested in Belize.

Extraditing Cuban citizens to the United States can be problematic because once they are in the country, it is difficult to ever return them to Cuba. But that hasn't stopped officials from allowing other Cubans to enter the United States to face prosecution. In 2009, for example, federal prosecutors extradited another Cuban, Rodolfo Rodriguez Cabrera, from Latvia to face charges of producing counterfeit slot machines. He was sentenced to two years in federal prison.